Potentially harmful computer software applications such as viruses, Trojans, spyware, and other kinds of malware are a constant threat to a variety of computing systems and devices. Various types of security systems exist to combat these threats, including virus scanners and firewalls. Nevertheless, many potentially harmful applications still manage to infect computing systems and devices and may carry out a variety of malicious actions.
Security software vendors utilize various methods designed to detect potentially harmful applications after they have been launched on a computing device and may initiate a “kill” signal to stop a running application after determining that the application poses a potential threat. However, methods used by traditional systems to remove potential threats may often be inconsistent and/or ineffective (e.g., some applications are not configured to handle kill signals or an application having a signal handler may have gone awry in a way that prevents it from properly handling the signal) and thus fail to stop detected malicious applications from continuing to run on a computing device after they have been launched.